Posted
by
simoniker
on Wednesday November 12, 2003 @08:14PM
from the click-click-boom dept.

morgue-ann writes "The $10.99 Dakota reusable digital camera announced in July was usefully hacked on November 6. First attempts to extract picture data took 10 hours to read out 16MB, but new code for Linux and Mac and Windows lets you get pictures quickly over USB and view or print them without Ritz's help (and with fewer of your $$)."

Ritz will probably use the DMCA to stop it.
There's a good story [washingtonpost.com] in today's Washington Post regarding the DMCA and
how businesses are being ensnared even under "fair use". In Lexmark's case
(detailed in the Wash Post story), Lexmark claimed that their copyright
was violated.

As silly as the law is let's hope that it's repealed/reformed and soon.

MacroVision is not added to consumer-created tapes, just like CSS isn't used by consumer-created DVD Video. There is no copy protection that would prevent you from duping your own copyrighted material from VHS to VHS, or DVD-R to DVD-R.

The original message was dead-on - it'll be interesting to see Ritz use DMCA to prevent users access to their own copyrighted photos.

The DMCA is vague on that point. It says that it is illegal to circumvent the technological measures used to protect a copyrighted work. It seems to be assumed that you do not own the copyright to the work in question, but this isn't explicitly stated from what I remember.

No, the copyrighted work being "violated" here is the camera firmware.

Lawyers will argue that, in order to use the copyrighted firmware in the camera, you must be licensed to do so. (This is false, but that hasn't stopped them so far.) Thus, by cracking open the camera and pulling the data out, you have made use of the camera firmware in an unlicensed manner. This constitutes copyright infringement.

Also, since the protection racket... er, mechanism in place to keep you from yanking the photos out is probably also the same mechanism that protects the firmware itself. Thus, by circumventing the method that "protects" your photos, you have also circumvented the method that protects the firmware. This is illegal under the DMCA.

Note that it is in no way whatsoever immoral, unethical, harmful, or wrong. It's merely illegal.

Lawyers will argue that, in order to use the copyrighted firmware in the camera, you must be licensed to do so.

Just like you need a license to read a copyrighted book. How they can use the above argument is beyond me.

Nobody signs an "EULA" before buying one of these cameras, so any argument about its usage is just a bunch of babies whining because their business model had a flaw it - one that the market has found and used to its advantage. And I think it's important to keep in mind is that people are bu

I know I'll probably be kicked off/. for saying this, but I don't see how you can say hacking this is not immoral, unethical, harmful or wrong. They are selling this camera at below wholesale cost so they can make their money on the back end, in the prints. As I understand it from when I first read about these cameras (this may have changed), they even give you a CD-r with your pictures on it when you get the camera "developed", so you can even print more copies without going through them. I think their ap

Excuse me, but THEY decided to use this hardware that could be hacked easily. Don't feel sorry for someone just because they made a bad business plan. Do you think people felt sorry for MS when Bob flopped? Do you think people felt sorry Apple when the Apple/// flopped?

Was it provided on a rent and return basis, though? If it was presented as a sale and the customer exchanged money for it rather than having to agree to any leasing T&Cs then it's hardly the customer's fault the company are idiots.

Well, go ahead and mod the parent up because it is a legit argument, but... if the business model falls apart because someone is "circumventing" an idiotic law that shouldn't exist to begin with, the business model is the problem, not the person who was savvy enough to figure out the work on their own.

Any company who's business relies on a shaky, ambiguous, morally (and quite probably legally) reprehensible law that a bunch of big business suits bought with some extra cash they had lying around isn't going to make it and doesn't deserve to.

I hate ditto posts, but EX-FRICKING-ACTLY! I am getting so tired of companies these days coming up with "business plans" that wouldn't survive a week in the real world, just because they can hide within the labyrinth of laws and smash anyone who acosts them. If they are "selling" those cameras at a loss, then that is *profoundly* stupid and they deserve to take a beating on it. (and they will since, now that the crack is out, it's never going to go away no matter how many people they sue)

All business is based on some assumption of law. For example, you can't just beat up your competitors. Is it moral that the law protects the weak from the strong? I think so, but there is a case to be made for the opposite.

In this case, we're the strong, and it's the artists, writers, programmers who are the weak. The DMCA is an effort to protect them. Is it therefore a shaky, ambiguous, and morally reprehensible law? Or just inconvenient to us?

Maybe I shouldn't reply to this, but it sounds like a sincere statement, so...

Here's some food for thought (and I admit that this may be a philosophically weak argument, but I've yet to find anybody to help debate this and make it better), and in particular, this is a basis for some sort of morality (yes, an attempt at a universal right and wrong, good and evil, etc).

When a person is born into this world, that person has a fixed amount of time until death. That person is then able to trade their time (eventually) for stuff which is either desired or needed, such as food, shelter, entertainment, etc. In our society, we tend to use money to represent the value of said time (quite literally, time is money). Yes, there is much more to this, and I need to write it all down someday, but this summary will do for this discussion.

Now, where does this idea tie in with the discussion? Well, anything which takes time from me without giving me back something that I value equally could be considered to be wrong or evil. For instance, if somebody steals $20 from me, then I have lost the time it took me to earn that $20, and it cannot be recovered. Hence, stealing is wrong in this system.

Now, put it in terms of the DMCA and the limitations which are placed on those subject to its rule. I buy a DVD with the expectation that I will be able to enjoy the contents on that DVD. I have equipment which is sufficient to allow me to do so (to wit: A computer equipped with a DVD-ROM drive), and so this would seem to be a reasonable expectation. I bring it home, pop it in, and find out that, for no better reason than I choose to use Linux (instead of Windows), I am unable to play the contents of this media.

Now, nobody will give me a refund on this opened DVD. The best I can do is exchange it for... the same DVD. Which I can't use. However, fortunately for me, other people have found themselves in the same boat. And they have the smarts to be able to figure out how to make this work. Unfortunately, the DMCA makes it illegal for them to tell me this information.

Under the DMCA, it is very possible for me to find myself out the money for a DVD which I might actually enjoy. Somebody has stolen some time from me, and I have no recourse. Now, before you tell me to use Windows, keep in mind that I must buy Windows, somehow, some way. Which means that I am out even more time. Or a stand-alone DVD player, which has the same issue.

The DMCA steals from me the ability to help others make use of the items which they have rightfully purchased with their time.

Now, for the counter-argument: The DMCA is meant to stop mass copyright infringement as has been enabled by the internet. I'll simply point out that mass infringers are already convictable under other laws. The DMCA gives no other benefits to help prevent actual infringment. None. It only allows producers of content to steal from me (and yes, they are stealing my time, by virtue of requiring potentially pricy extras that I may not already have to enjoy what they produce).

Gah, it's getting late here, and my brain is shutting down as I type this (I think the first part is more coherent than the second part). Thoughts from you?

I'll buy that argument for the first time you buy a DVD - if you weren't aware of the DMCA, etc.

But now that you are aware of the DMCA, if you buy a DVD expecting to play it on a Linux system, then you're an idiot, pure and simple. From the point the law was passed, that was THE LAW and being ignorant of it is not a valid excuse.

No - they are not stealing your time. If you buy a DVD, then you are a willing participant in the so-called "theft" of your time and it is not really theft anymore.

I buy a DVD with the expectation that I will be able to enjoy the contents on that DVD. I have equipment which is sufficient to allow me to do so (to wit: A computer equipped with a DVD-ROM drive), and so this would seem to be a reasonable expectation. I bring it home, pop it in, and find out that, for no better reason than I choose to use Linux (instead of Windows), I am unable to play the contents of this media.

I'm fascinated by your argument...and I'll be spending several days thinking about it. The economist in me is amused.

For the most part, humans do think this way, but there is one area we don't: children. The loss of a child's life is amazingly tragic, whereas the loss of an adult's life is less so. This doesn't make much sense, in that the adult had more time on them, and more learning...consider a 30 year old has 30 years of investment for life, whereas a newborn does not, and a newborn is easily replicat

Well, go ahead and mod the parent up because it is a legit argument, but... if the business model falls apart because someone is "circumventing" an idiotic law that shouldn't exist to begin with, the business model is the problem, not the person who was savvy enough to figure out the work on their own.

Every law is "idiotic" to those who don't like what it means.

Using the DCMA to protect digital cameras of this type isn't an injustice. Many people cannot afford to buy expensive digital cameras or have on

The obvious answer is to encrypt the pictures with Ritz's public key and have the private key kept only in their machines. Don't fight technology with stupid legislation, fight it with better technology.

According to a Mercury News story [siliconvalley.com] , the camera is nearly unhackable through its proprietary interface (aha! those wily hackers will never figure this one out!).

"Hackers will have a hard time making Dakota Digital cameras reusable at home. The cameras have a special plug, so you can't use any standard computer cable for connecting to a personal computer. Also, you can't erase more than one picture and the images are stored in a raw format that won't be recognized by photo-editing software."

Why can't they use something like RSA to encrypt the photos so that only the Ritz people can read them?

Do these people shy away from proven algorithms because they don't have the processor power, because they don't want to pay licensing fees, etc? Do they use proven algorithms and implement them badly? Or do they just figure that they can make up something on their own, and that it will stand up to attack?

Maybe all of the above to make the product as cheap as possible. I was thinking who their market is - people who want a cheap camera to take on vacation (who cares if it gets lost or stolen). Your typical consumer of these cameras are not going to hack into them nor will they care to.

The last time I checked, $15 for a (film) disposable + $10 processing vs. $11 digital camera + $11 "processing". $25 film vs. $22 digital. I'd still go with the film just because of the better quality of photos. They're going

Why can't they use something like RSA to encrypt the photos so that only the Ritz people can read them?

Public-key crypto might be a good idea for this... although it would depend on Ritz's ability to keep the secret key secret. All it would take is one bored, low-wage camera shop employee to leak the secret key, and all would be lost.

I suppose you could take steps to physically control access to the PC's doing the decryption, so that a cashier couldn't extract the key, but the technicians would still

Vary the keys. Give each camera a serial number when it is manufactured and after each processing, store the private key in a massive database (storage isn't that expensive, and I doubt this would be *that* widespread), then load that up when it's sent back in. When a camera is sent in for processing, read its key then deactivate the key so it can never be read again.

Okay, there's a problem if someone gets their hands on the database, but that would be much harder to do. And remember, this is what a colleg

If they did use public key encryption (which seems pretty unlikely given who this is) it seems like you would have access to the cameras private key and ritzs public key. Which seems pretty dubiously secure to me if I recall my crypto. And lord knows you can always hack the firmware / hardware to just skip all that crap, since the data is obviously unencrypted and digital at somepoint.

it seems like you would have access to the cameras private key and ritzs public key. Which seems pretty dubiously secure to me if I recall my crypto.

You don't. The camera wouldn't need a private key. The camera would have Ritz's public key and only Ritz would have their private key. Camera encrypts images with Ritz's public key. No key stored in the camera could be used to decrypt it.

Validation in public key crypto is a little different than what you are thinking.

There is ever only one key involved on each end, and they both have to be part of the same pair. In encryption you encrypt with the recipient's public key and they decrypt with their private key(*)

In validation (or digital signature) you take a hash of the message (usually SHA1) and encrypt that with your private key. Thus the only key capable of decrypting it is your public key (which everyone has). Remember with key-pairs what you do with one you can only undo with the other.Anyway, the recipient creates their own hash of the message, decrypts your "signature" (which is an encrypted hash) and if the two match up, then they know it was signed by you and that it was not tampered with.

(*) Actually, public key crypto is painfully slow. What REALLY happens is a random symmetric key is chosen to encrypt the message, then the public key is used to encrypt the symmetric key. Decryption is the reverse, you decrypt the symmetric key with your private key, then use it to decrypt the message. This actually ends up being a lot faster than doing the whole thing with public key crypto. I left this out above to make it a little simpler.

I was just at Walgreens last night to try to find one of these suckers (who offer a different packaging, but same concept and circuitry). They didn't have them. I was going to go to a couple area Ritz to see if they had them. But noooooo. Slashdot broke the story and now Ritz will yank them off the shelves or others will grab them first.

you can get a logitech pocket digital for like 37 dollars; basically same specs, but looks a whole lot nicer and does exactly the same thing - except maybe actually storing more pictures on the internal memory.With parts and time invested, I think it is more than worth the 26 dollars difference.

Yes i know there is the geek "i hacked my cheap-ass camera" factor, but come on... if you want to be a geek, there are more worthwhile projects on which to spend your time!

I clicked on the article, read a liitle bit, clicked a link, then came back to find the only content was an entry reading "I am stupid" Not sure if it's because he allowed himself to be slashdotted, or because he posted the info and fears the ol' DMCA C&D letter.

Does their business model (the manufacturer, not the hacker) depend on remanufacturing these things? I don't know about DMACA (digital millenium anti-competition act) violations, but I'd think a simple deposit on sale system what fix any issues with consumers keeping the cameras. It works for car batteries, it can work for these cameras.

It depends on the deposit. If it's too large, it will negate the point of getting a 'disposable' (I know it's not actually disposable) camera. If it's too cheap, people will just take it anyway.

For example, no one will put down $60 as a deposit on the camera, being told they'll get $50 back when they return the camera. And if the deposit is only $20 (for a total of $30 for the camera) people will still just walk away with 'em.

I think it'd be really hard to come up with a deposit cost that would both be ke

Ritz did the same mistake that most companies do, they opt for the obscurity is security model. A smarter model is to instead follow the open source model that uses equipment that is prohibitive for the average user to purchase.

Example, rather than use, say, USB cabling, use some proprietory GPIO system that only Ritz controls. Heck, patent the heck out of it. Only needs a $5 CPLD to impliment a controller, but most casual hackers don't care to get into hardware-hacking on this scale. Sure, someone will break it, but then those capable will be a limited subset of the market, and damage is minimized.

Nice. Except that you will have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into developing custom ASIC chips and such. Which is rather cost-prohibitive, when you can go with the cheap off-the-shelf variety. Which is what ritz did -- they used an off-the-shelf design and exactly the same chips as extremely cheap 1mp cameras.

Also, if someone will actually bother to make a custom USB cable, they can probably use a microcontroller as well.

Example, rather than use, say, USB cabling, use some proprietory GPIO system that only Ritz controls

Too much effort and cost. This problem can be handled in software; much cheaper.

How? I haven't seen these cameras, so I don't know for sure, but for $11 I really doubt they have an LCD display, which means that the camera has no need to be able to read the images it has taken.

Since that's the case, Ritz could just add a little bit of code to their camera and encrypt each image as it's written to flash. Simplest case, just give each camera a DES key, stored in ROM or NVRAM, and have it encrypt each while writing. DES is fast enough that it can be implemented in software on itty bitty microprocessors with no problem. AES is even faster, but DES is simpler (and there are a zillion PD implementations in whatever language you like).
Users can feel free to find ways to download the images, but they'll get nothing useful.

Of course, if you could hack your camera to dig out the encryption key, you could get your pictures out without paying for "developing", but that's way too much effort.

If that's not secure enough, Ritz should just have the camera generate a random 3DES key for each image, encrypt with it, encrypt the 3DES key with a Ritz RSA public key and store the key with the photo. To break that one, someone would have to either break RSA or find a way to monitor the internals of the camera and extract the 3DES key while it's still in cleartext. Doable, but you'd pretty much have to have your camera hooked up to a bunch of equipment while taking the photos. So you could get "free" pictures of your basement... Might actually be easier just to hook inside and read the image out before it gets encrypted.

All of the code for either solution (on-camera code, manufacturing code for injecting keys, download and decrypt code for the printing) can easily be written, tested and debugged in two weeks by a competent programmer familiar with such things.

I have a feeling that the makers of these cameras will start to spin how the computer community is to blame for hacking every consumer product and making it do things that the manufacturer never intended. They can say stuff like "We can't make any good products because when we do, someone finds a way to hack and ruin it!" They then run behind the DMCA so that they can make money on a plan that is shown to be flawed. Do they make a better product? Nope. They just get behind their lawyers and try to cram

Personally.. i think this is a SMART move for a company, to not enovke the DMCA.. as another posted stated there only available in select cities.. well im in Canada.. and i can tell you ill have one in my hot palm by Xmas, as im sure most of my buddies will.

Starting when someone sucessfully extracted the cheese from the middle of two ritz crackers. It was the first time in history that crackers sucessfully cracked other crackers, though I hear a few tried too hard and went 'crackers'.

It's interesting to see so many people respond that this is a bad thing. How is this any different than people that hack their XBOXs to run Linux? You're essentially using a device differently than its intended use, and depriving the manufacturer of an expected revenue stream. What's the difference? I'm not saying that people shouldn't have the right to do whatever they want with something they buy... I do... but there seems to be a big difference in how the slashdot community interprets two very similar situations.

This is a forum, with many people, some agree with you, others don't (even on this point there will be people who agree and people who don't). Some may be hypocritical, but I don't agree with you on this point, where do you see the many people saying this is a bad

Those film disposables are actually reuseable.. The film is in a normal 35mm cartridge.. The trick is the winding mechanism rolls the film into the camera when a shot is taken (most cameras do it the other way around). so reloading the camera is practically imposible and not worth it (you'd have to do it complete darkness)

I'm surprised they didn't do something similar to the digital cameras. Don't make it imposible, just not worth the effort. I gues they didn't try hard enough.

I think the problem lies in that businesses use standard formats inside their "proprietary" system, meaning once the "outer layer" encryption and protection is broken, the hracker sees everything in plaintext. Clearly, in using a chip that is the base chip for other cheap digital cams, once the hacker reverse enginered the USB pin scrambling, the game was pretty much over as the rest was just a matter of following the tech docs for the chip.

A $99 computer with a proprietary (QNX-based) OS on a flash disk, that was sold at a loss because the company figured they'd make money from their dialup service... Until someone found the IDE connector on the motherboard and installed something else.

Well, after a short war between the hackers and the company (including state of the art protection mechanisms as epoxy glue on the bios, torx screws, clipped IDE pins etc) the company finally had to raise the price of the unit, resulting in the sales plumeting, and in the end bankrupcy.

Now, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to hack devices like this, heck I've got an iopener (running jailbait [sf.net] linux) standing next to my main computer. But there is a good chance that soon nobody will use the $11 developing deal, resulting in the cameras getting pulled from the stores.

Just as there were lots of people happily using iopeners as they were intended, I'm sure there are lots of people happy with the service that Ritz is providing, and if so it's a shame if we, the hacker community, proceed to destroy yet another service for other consumers.

Now, of course I'm included in this, but for this article and accompanying comments, I can see the wheels not turning too quickly.

How many people in society use disposable cameras? many hands raise How many of you know or care about taking a few hours to go to the lengths needed to get this hack done? few hands raised. To sum up for everyone crying doom for this business model:

Hacking value for fun: 8 out of 10 points.

Hacking value for...um.... actual value: 1 out of 10 points.

In short, RTFA if you think Joe and Jane six-pack will care about this. If you still think this matters to the business plan after readinging TFA, keep refreshing untill you slashdot it again and get the I'm stupid page.

Actually, some of these points are not in the articles, and (not surprisingly) seem to be causing some confusion based on some of the comments I have seen above.

1) The cameras are purchased, just like any ordinary (non-digital) disposable camera. There is no rental agreement, nothing to sign, no deposit, etc. Some previous comments have asked about this. Also, the camera IS cheap; the hardware itself costs probably no more than $25-50 to manufacture, and likely pay for themselves in 1 or 2 processings. The big draw is that you can use them in potentially hazardous environments, and if it gets destroyed or stolen, this only sets you back $11 + a few minutes to solder a new connector into a new camera.

2) The batteries are changeable by the user - they are ordinary AA alkalines. They will last much longer than 1 25-picture cycle (I haven't yet managed to exhaust a set), but when they do run down, just open the battery cover and pop in fresh ones.

3) The sensor is actually 1.3 megapixels, not 2MP as claimed on the package.

4) The picture quality is mediocre - but not nearly as bad as these [terrainhost.com] samples would have you believe (I don't know what happened to that guy's cam). Try the samples here [cexx.org] and here [maushammer.com] (middle of page) for other samples. The biggest problem seems to be motion blurs from not holding the camera steady enough (the "shutter speed" is pretty slow). The other problem is that the lens is adjusted to be in-focus at some specific point probably between 4-12 feet from the camera. In practice, your subject will usually not be exactly at the in-focus distance. While you've got the camera open to solder in a little USB socket (or whatever), you can rotate the lens to adjust it for other distances [cexx.org], up to within [cexx.org] an inch of the lens.

5) Concerns that this hack will be singlehandedly responsible for driving the cameras off the market, driving Ritz out of business, etc., seem largely unfounded. They will probably go off the market anyway - last time I was in Wolf Camera, the sales associates were actually warning people away from these cameras, saying that they would get slightly better image quality from the film disposables (for less $$, and 27 vs. 25 pictures - it's a no-brainer, come to think of it...)

Dakota Digital Camera (Note to self: Make this page so that ordinary users, who double-click on this page, can't edit this page...)(please try and keep this document readable at large)(if it grows further, it needs to be organized into separate pages)

I really have never sympathized with that line of reasoning. It's not as bad as the "but these new horseless buggys will put God-fearing men out of work" anti-technology advocates, but it's in the same ballpark.

As others have noticed, Ritz put together a business that relies on security through obscurity rather than through, y'know, actual security features. Some of the ideas posted elsewhere on this topic included a cheap, pattented Ritz-controlled cable, limiting the hacking to extreme hardware hackers,

anyways, they should have just sold the damn cameras at profit ang get over with it. it's not like the damn cameras would have cost more than 20-40$ anyways(judging from picture quality).

and more importantly the product seems so shitty nobody technically apt wouldn't use it in the first place for the price(actually, they might rake in profit even if they were just used once with full amount of pics to test out the service and picture quality, per unit). if i w

This is a clear case of reverse-engineering for compatibility, which is a DMCA exception big enough to drive a truckload of cheap digital cameras through... Asice from the little detail that there's NO copyrighted work being protected here.

Think it through, friends and neighbors... (Gee, "think it through" rhymes with "Get a clue" but is ever so much more polite...)

My new business model is for all Slashdot users with ID numbers ending in '9' to pay me five dollars per post. You can always re-register until you get an ID that doesn't end in 9 if you don't want to pay. How can you put me out of work by not paying me for your post? I rely on that revenue!

'Usefully hacked' ? How is this a good thing ? Ritz put together a business that relies on revenues that it will no longer have. Congratulations to those hackers/crackers who have likely now put those individuals out of work.

Buggy-whip manufacturers have been put out of existence a long time ago by Ford et al. Though fucking shit.

Hey, I know! Ritz can get the government to put a hidden levy on Palm m100/m105 hotsync cables! Because, you know, everyone who purchases hotsync cables must be intent on using them, at least some of the time, for ripping Ritz pictures.

Kinda like what they do with CDR for RIAA. It's such a good idea.

After they're done with that one, I think they'd better put in a levy on Craftsman tools, because home mechanics are cheating Midas Muffler out of revenue, and a levy on Tupperware containers, because we're

Ritz put together a business that relies on revenues that it will no longer have. Congratulations to those hackers/crackers who have likely now put those individuals out of work.

And shame on those who put together the business model. Honestly the stupidest business plan in the world has to be to sell hardware for less than it costs to make it. Do you honestly think people are going to feel bad at trying to maximize their utility from products they purchased? I use things as they were not intended by the m

No, it isn't stealing. Neither is selling hardware cheaply and assuming that people will earn you a profit by buying your software. Both are merely flawed business models; stealing would mean that you took the camera without paying anything for it.

Moreover, if you "rent" something and don't stipulate a return-by date or charge a fee for extended possession, it most likely would fail to meet any legal condition for "rental". The idiocy of a company can rarely be mitigated by the idiocy of law.